Beyond the Score

Reporting Equity and Justice in Educational Accountability

Going back several years, I’d hear colleagues frequently using the term “equity” to characterize the work they were doing.
It seemed like a good thing. It’s not like I support inequity.
But in the end, I really didn’t know what it meant.
I’d heard about DEI programs and interventions that characterize themselves as equity-focused.
But those are inputs and I’m an outputs guy.
I was curious: How would one characterize/recognize and ultimately quantify equity in terms of the outputs we all know and love - state summative assessment results?
So what did I do? This was pre-ChatGPT so I started Googling.

I saw the fence as a metaphor for the “proficiency” requirements and the individuals seeing over the fence as demonstrating proficiency.
I saw disparate proficiency outcomes represented by some individuals seeing over the fence and others not.
I saw Equality, where “input” boxes are of equal height, not eliminating proficiency disparities.
I saw Equity, where “input” boxes adjust in height to the need of the individual, leading to the elimination of proficiency disparities.
I felt like I was starting to get it.

Making the children different heights implicitly blames the student for not being able to see over the fence.
The graphic doesn’t address the uneven playing field associated with the systemic inequities that exist in our society.
So I wanted to see if I could come up with a graphic that merges these ideas together.

This is perfect or better than other illustrations.
This is original or the best way to think about these ideas.
It did, however, help me get some traction on how ideas like equity and justice could be quantified in terms of the outputs we all know and love - state summative assessment results.
That’s what I’m going to run with for the rest of this presentation.

The boxes represent the equity “contribution”.
The contribution includes, for example, supplemental learning interventions and supports to help students who are behind “catch up”.
These contributions would manifest themselves as higher rates of growth for those students.
That is, student growth is the basis for investigating equity.